CAN WE ACHIEVE A MILITARY VICTORY IN IRAQ?

Over the last several days, it has become apparent that President Bush is leaning toward accepting a plan to make one last try at achieving a military victory in Iraq. The plan will almost certainly involve adding at least 20,000 American troops to the Baghdad area, and perhaps more. To be effective, though, those troops will have to have a clear mission. What will that mission be? Who will they fight? To what end?

One of the major problems we have faced since the beginning of the insurgency is the changing nature of the adversary. At first, he was primarily composed of Sunni rejectionists backed by foreign jihadists. Today, most of the experts I have heard and read say the violence in Iraq is primarily being driven by Shiite vs. Sunni antagonisms, with a healthy dose of Sunni insurgents and foreign jihadists, along with violent, criminal gangs who kidnap and murder for profit. Add to that the continuing influence of foreign, especially Iranian, agents, and you have a witches brew of violence.

Will our soldiers continue to be used as policemen? If they can bring the level of violence down to an acceptable level, can that be maintained by Iraqi forces, or will the violence simply spike back up as soon as American troop levels are drawn down?

For the moment, while I am emotionally drawn to calls for victory in Iraq, I remain very doubtful that any kind of military victory can be achieved with anything less than an all-out war against Iran and Syria, carried out with massive, merciless force. Since no such action is being contemplated, nor would it even be possible with the current force levels, then I am left with the same, sad, pitiless conclusion. We will choose to leave Iraq, if not now, then eventually, probably by 2008 or 2009. When we leave, we will declare victory, but everyone will know that we were defeated. At that point, we will be weaker than at anytime since 1941. The consequences of our weakness will not be the peace the advocates of withdrawal are looking for, rather it will be war, far larger and more deadly than anything we have seen so far.